How close it had been... another few seconds and the Enemy might have completed its obscene mission, and so doomed the Dorvik race. For the moment at least, all was saved. He turned to e'Kraft and saw relief mirrored in his eyes.

"General, I--"

He was interrupted by the reappearance of the General's aide. "Puissance, we detected a grave disturbance after the detonation."

"After?"

"Yes, Puissance. Somehow the intruder survived the detonation."

"That's impossible!" shrieked lal, even as he accepted the awful truth. Nothing made by men could withstand the vast fireball that the Vengeance has become. What were they fighting?

The game might already be over. Lal's eyes looked across the Imperial gardens, but his mind saw a wave of hell creeping out ever so slowly from an annihilated star. The energy from such a detonation would vaporize planets a hundred parsecs away; and the destruction would creep on, confined to the speed of light but pushing inexorably across the galaxy. His race would know of the explosion, and would retreat before the swelling sphere of oblivion, but little by little the galaxy would be taken away from them, until every planet was lifeless and his race...

"See! The maggots have guessed what we're going to do. That was a nasty jolt they gave us, don't you think, Gyrf?

"The maggots are trying to avoid the big fry, but they can't save themselves." He paused, overcome by anticipations of delight. "We'll watch the fire spread from nest to nest-for ten thousand years we'll watch them burn."

The other creature agreed enthusiastically, its earlier anger almost forgotten. Neither of them noticed a slight wavering in the air behind them. The distortion was in the far infrared and near microwave. The changing refractive indicesd moved through the visibvle, the ultraviolt, the gamma. Sill Gyrd and Arn were too engrossed to notice.